Forty-nine years ago tonight, Steve and I said "I do" to each other and meant it with all our hearts. We wrote our own vows -- something that was very much in vogue in those days. Those vows spoke about our love and the commitment we were making, but the words were very personal, and I'm not ready to share them just yet. Maybe next year, on our 50th.
I found the receipt from our 2-night hotel bill in Atlanta during our honeymoon. It was a whopping $35.02, which was a big splurge for us at the time. Even though we had NO MONEY, we were able to make it financially with student loans and a weekly job I had playing the organ for a small Methodist church in Auburn.
One story from our early years that always makes us chuckle: Fondue sets were popular wedding gifts back then. I think we received three of them. They allowed us to prepare cheap meals when company came for supper in our 10' x 50' trailer -- oil in the pot and cubes of stew meat with a baked potato. Voila!
Another story that is funny NOW but pretty startling then: Steve came home from work the second year we were married, and I had rented us a house and bought some furniture. He definitely should have kept me away from the Classified Ads in the newspaper. I was tired of our 3-room furnished, shotgun apartment and ready to get on with the business of being adults. He was pretty shocked and more than a little nervous about the money I'd spent. We were "one" with very different personalities. He has always been rock steady. I've always been tugging us forward or in a new direction.
We had spent a relatively short amount of time (in terms of hours/days/weeks) in each other's physical presence before we got married because of being at separate universities, but our values and beliefs were the same. Our family backgrounds were similar.
I was attracted to his smile, his black wavy hair, his quiet, gentle spirit, his intelligence and the promise I saw in him of having and providing a bright future. Who knows what in the world attracted him to me? Bless his heart. But, he says he fell in love with me when he heard me play an arrangement of "Blessed Assurance" one night at church. I'd like to think that I was communicating something of my core through that music.
I have 49 years' worth of stories I could share, but most of all, I want to tell all of you how much I love Steve Pearson, how grateful I am that God has allowed me to be his wife and how much I treasure each day we have together.
Ecclesiastes 4:9 - "Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor."
Mark 10:9 - "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
Genesis 2:24 - "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
1 Corinthians 13:4a - "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails;"